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Liam is quite possibly the most irreligious of staunch believers in Christmas miracles in Beacon Hills or North America or, as his current circumstances would have it, Greece where he's currently elbow deep in packing his suitcase for his flight home for the holidays.
It's a typical image in the montage of Liam's life, of course, from high school trips to play away games to packing chaotically for college in LA, to throwing together his things to try his fortune at grad school and then, even after that, fumbling together a suitcase for his year abroad of field experience in Greece to complete his thesis for his master's in anthropology. One would think that he'd finally figure out a more efficient way to get his belongings not to burst at the seams, but as luck would have it, he's never been very good at outgrowing the more clumsy and endearing habits of his. So when he dives underneath the dresser in his foster family's guest bedroom and resurfaces with the last of his roll of duct tape, he counts it as the first of many Christmas miracles to come. He can feel it in his bones, he tells himself, as he engages his werewolf strength to manhandle the suitcase into submission and then mummify it in the final lengths of duct tape.
"What're you gonna do if they have you open it for random security checks?" Mason asks him with a perfectly poised eyebrow over FaceTime, as Liam flops down in a starfish formation with his phone propped up on the nightstand.
Liam waves a hand dismissively. "They won't. When have they ever checked me?"
"On your domestic flight to New York two years ago, for that conference," Mason supplies, unimpressed. "When you and Theo ran off across the Canadian border to see Niagara Falls. Oh, and when you and I flew with my fam to Costa Rica. And then again on the flight back."
"It's already duct taped and ready to go," Liam whines. "If there were a better way to pack, I would've found it by now."
"Right," Mason drawls. "Just like if there were a way to boil pasta without it having go up in flames, you would've found it by now."
"Exactly!" Liam throws up his hands. "You see my point?"
"Crystal clear," says Mason.
Liam points a finger blindly at the screen of his phone as he drapes his other forearm dramatically over his face. "Grad school has made you a skeptic, Mase. Believe in the power of Christmas miracles. When has my luck ever run out at Christmas?"
Mason is just opening his mouth to give a probably unwelcome response to that, outlining one out of at least eleven different times when Liam's 'Christmas miracle' luck came back to bite him in the ass, but just then Liam's phone chimes with an email notification. He squints at the ceiling and gropes around in thin air for his device.
Mason has the unfortunate privilege of witnessing Liam's exhausted but charmingly contented expression turn first to confusion, then to slack-jawed shock as he reads whatever it is in his notifications.
"No," Liam whispers. His voice quickly rises to a moan. "No, no, no, no--!"
"Li?" Mason interjects quietly. "What? What. What's going on?"
"Noo," Liam wails again, and this time he flings himself backward, and seems sorely put out by the fact that he's already lying down and therefore can't flop back into the bed any harder. "Mase. Mase. They canceled my flight. They said all outbound flights are canceled pending further notice. What the fuck."
"What the fuckity fuck indeed," Mason mutters as his fingers fly over the keyboard of his laptop, searching for more information on the situation. "Shit, Li. They're right. E.V. International at Athens--that's you--all their flights are on hold because of…"
Liam tunes out the reasonable lilt of Mason's voice in favor of dragging his hands down his face and indulging in a quiet scream into his fingers. Dramatic, sure, but hey, he's the one who's been chin-deep and drowning up to his eyeballs in dusty artifacts and vast stacks of library tomes and barely sleeping or getting any proper food into his system at work just to get his thesis done. So sue him for actually believing that for once in his life, the universe will give him a break and let him go home to Beacon Hills--shitty, Nemeton-driven, supernatural drama-infested Beacon Hills--to spend a quiet Christmas with his parents and best friends and packmates and boyfriend.
"Christmas miracle luck, yeah?" Mason finishes softly. He has the grace to offer Liam a grimace of sympathy. "You want me to check if any of the other major airports still have flights available?"
Liam nods glumly, only half-listening, as his best friend goes through the motions of researching what they both already know to be a lost cause. With it being the peak of the traveling season, and Liam not having tracked the news to find out sooner about the debacle at the Athens airport, chances are a million to one that he'll find another outbound flight to America, let alone one he can afford.
Sure enough, a few clicks and taps later, Mason's face fills the phone screen again with a gusty sigh of apology. "Nothing, Liam."
Liam, who has decided to take up permanent residence behind the shield of his hands, proffers a single whimper in response.
"But, hey--the pack will be in one place, mostly, to give you a video call when we're having dinner!" Mason says bracingly. He probably means for the statement to be a rousing encouragement, but instead it has the opposite effect: at the reminder that his alpha and practically the entire pack stretching from coast to coast will be squished together in the McCall living room to open Secret Santa presents and fight over the apple crumble and pester the adults for seconds, Liam offers up another longer, more pained whimper in Mason's direction.
"Okay. Okay, okay. I guess I'm--clearly not helping," Mason mutters. "Oh, wait, hey--Theo's here."
"Great," Liam grouses into his palms. "Another asshole to tell me I told you so."
"Excuse me, I'm the only asshole in your life who tells you I told you so," says Theo's offended voice from the speaker. "Which, by the way, I did not tell you so. This was actually not your fault. Shockingly."
That gets Liam to drop his hands and turn over on his side to glare at his boyfriend. "Amazing. You managed to make me feel loads better. Congratu-fucking-lations."
"Well, you did finally knock him out of his catatonic state, so I'd say you're doing way better than me," says Mason with his hands up in the air. "Good luck, buddy. I'll be back with our coffee." He slaps Theo once on the shoulder and shuffles away from their table at the café where Theo apparently met up with Mase after school, and leaves the two bickering boyfriends to hash out their virtual tension.
"Seriously. You may be a disaster, but your disasters do not typically lead to hostage situations at the airport," Theo says dryly.
Liam blinks. "Oh. Is that what it was?"
Theo opens his mouth and then closes it, shaking his head fondly. He shrugs off his flannel sherpa jacket to reveal his faded pink hoodie underneath and rolls up the sleeves as he commandeers Mason's laptop to presumably check for alternative flights.
Liam sighs, head sagging forward on his neck. "Mase already checked. You don't have to bother."
"Yeah, well. Maybe he didn't check hard enough." There's a bite to Theo's words, something Liam hasn't heard in a long while, but he understands the comment for what it is: not a slight against Mason's devotion, but an unwitting confession of just how desperate Theo is to see Liam in flesh and blood after all the time they've spent apart this semester.
Liam indulges him in a few rapid clicks and typed phrases. He knows it the moment Theo's expression clouds with frustration and resignation.
"Theo," Liam says softly. "It's okay. I'll--I'll probably find something after the new year. It's not a huge deal. My foster family won't mind having me for an extra two weeks, I'm sure. I know it's not ideal, but at the end of the day, I'll get to see you, right?"
Theo works his jaw and picks at the rolled cuff of his hoodie. What Liam is conveniently sidestepping is the fact that he won't be among his packmates to celebrate Christmas this year. Or to ring in the new year, either. No one ever had the time to spend more than the few days of the holidays together in Beacon Hills.
And then to dampen the entire mood further, Theo reminds him in a mutter, "Starting my training for the internship second week of January, remember?"
"Then we'll have an awesome one week of time together!" Liam says with as much sickening cheer as he can inject into his voice. Honestly, he has no idea how they got here, with him being the one to comfort Theo and not the other way around. Well, things never were traditional or rational between the two of them.
It's Theo's turn to heave a sigh and bury his face in his hands. Mason chooses that moment to reappear in the background of the screen with two drinks in his hands. His eyes flit back and forth between the chimera and his best friend still in frame. "Oh, dear," he says. "Liam made you sad. Liam, you made Theo sad now. You're like--you're like an intercontinental virus of doom and gloom."
Liam's mouth falls open in offense. "Excuse me, I am not! I am a ray of fucking sunshine and Theo is giant sponge for angst, he just mops it up like--"
Theo growls through his fingers at the same moment that Mason decides to enact damage control and cuts in with a loud and over-cheery recounting of Corey's antics over breakfast earlier. Theo gradually loses the edge of his grouchiness and actually seems to brighten quite a bit at the first two sips of the peppermint mocha monstrosity that Mason shoves into his hands. When Theo catches Liam smirking through the camera, he raises his middle finger to his eyebrow and takes an extra long, extra noisy drag of his straw.
And if Liam gets lost a little bit in memorizing the pixelated planes and curves of Theo's face as he concentrates on sucking the last dregs of peppermint from the bottom of his cup, only Liam has to know that.
---
Liam flails awake at half past devil's ass o'clock the next morning to the ring of his phone on his nightstand. He snatches his phone from the table and jabs at the screen, squinting, when he sees it's Theo.
"Hello. Goodbye," Liam complains into the receiver in his scratchy voice.
"Yeah, yeah, good morning, listen--you need to get to the airport in the next one and a half hours. No, actually, scratch that--make it there in the next hour."
"What." Liam has never done a faster voluntary sit-up in his life. The sheets pool around his hips, tangling around his legs as he kicks at them impatiently, and somehow Theo's voice is still rattling over the phone while Liam struggles to pick his coherence, his morning face and his dignity all off the floor at once.
"Slow down, hold on, hold on-- what?"
"There is a flight that leaves in an hour and twenty minutes," Theo enunciates for him, as Liam hops around on one foot in search of his one sock that always slips off and goes questing in the parallel universes in the night. "The hostage thing is over and flights are back up again. Get a taxi or whatever, grab your things, just make sure you have your passport and wallet and all your ID's. Don't forget anything."
"Jesus," Liam swears when it finally dawns on him what Theo's saying. Well, they always did say 'tis the season to call on his holy name. "Theo--you found a flight? You bought me a ticket?!"
"Yes. Thank me later by Venmo," Theo deadpans. "You can thank me now by brushing your damn teeth and getting out of there."
"Sir, yes, sir," Liam breathes. He means it to be mocking, but really, the pure adoration in his befuddled voice right now probably isn't helping to steer away from the accidental innuendo.
"I'll text you the ticket information when we get off. Just go, go, go," Theo orders him.
"I'm going!" Liam hollers around the toothbrush in his mouth and the comb stuck halfway through his hair. "What the hell, Theo, I love you so much--"
"You can tell me all about it later," Theo cuts him off, then stresses, "in detail."
Liam definitely makes a half-strangled sound like a birthing seal at that, and then Theo hangs up on him.
---
Liam is halfway through the vast, arching lobby of the bustling airport when he checks the photo and link that Theo texted him on the ride over. He starts brisk walking toward the nearest check-in kiosk, then stops dead in his tracks when he zooms in on the pic and realizes just what he's looking at.
A ticket outbound from LAX, headed to EVIA. A ticket. From California. To Greece. Liam thumbs frantically over the screen, but Theo hasn't sent any other attachment. Liam sure appreciates being sent his return ticket, but right now it's not what he fucking needs, dammit.
He's halfway to navigating over to Theo's contact information when the devil himself comes calling. Liam picks up before the first ring has ended.
“Theo, thank G-d,” Liam rushes out in lieu of a greeting. “What the fuck kind of ticket did you send me?”
“Liam–”
“I’m serious, I’m here and I spent way too much on the taxi to get to the airport and the traffic was awful too because everybody’s piling up in the city to go somewhere else with all the problems with the outbound flights, and you sent me a reverse ticket and I don’t know if you tossed your brain cells in the blender or something–”
“Liam, where the fuck are you?”
That makes the werewolf pause a bit and snap his mouth shut. On instinct, not stopping to consider how bizarre his boyfriend’s question is, he swivels around on his heel and gapes around at the hanging signs for a landmark. “Uh–there is a weird knock-off Shake Shack to my right and then a bunch of duty-free jewelry stores on the left and–”
“Jesus, Li, I told you to go to Gate 7. Go to Gate 7--you know what? Never mind. I swear to G-d…”
“You didn’t tell me to go to Gate 7,” Liam argues, just to piss Theo off, because now that he thinks of it he can faintly remember the sound of Theo’s voice over the speaker earlier directing him to head to Gate 7. Maybe. Kinda.
“Yes, I did, and it doesn’t matter, because I’m telling you again now.” Theo swears colorfully a couple times and there’s the concerning sound of things zipping and dropping and clattering in the background, which has Liam straining to figure out over the buzz of the crowd what on earth the chimera might be doing that has stripped him of all his supernatural hand-eye coordination. “Whatever,” Theo huffs. “I’ll walk to you. After I already walked up two escalator flights because their electricity was out. Start waving your hand so I can see–”
“Start waving my–what the hell are you going on about, Theo?”
“Are you waving your hand or not?”
“Oh, my G-d, fine, fine, I’ll wave my fucking hand,” Liam snaps. He’s still confused to high hell and back. Still, he starts jumping up and down on the tile like an utter fool. It’s fine. It’s the story of his life, anyway.
And then it hits him.
“Are you in fucking GREECE right now?!” he shrieks into the receiver.
"Maybe I am," says Theo's voice, and this time there's two of them. "What're you gonna do about it?"
Liam drops his suitcase and whirls. There at the very end of the tiled walk, at least three hundred feet away, is Theo fucking Raeken himself in flesh and blood, looking all kinds of pissed and pleased at the same time. He's coming at a brisk trot in Liam's direction, but of course Liam can't wait. He hangs up and breaks out into a dead sprint toward his boyfriend.
Theo braces himself for impact a second before Liam leaps into his arms and koala's his legs around Theo's torso. "Oh my G-d, oh my G-d, oh my G-d," is Liam's endless and breathless chant into his ear as Theo sways back and holds him, caresses him, never lets go. "Theo, Theo, how are you even here?"
So maybe Theo can't resist being an asshole, just a little bit. "Well, you see, Liam, in 1903, there were these two men named Wilbur and Orville Wright who invented a machine called an airplane--"
He's cut off by the solid weight of Liam's palm slapping against his chest. "Shut up. You know that's not what I meant."
Theo takes one look at him then, at his boyfriend with the impossibly wide eyes the color of the lake or a summer sky, and he can't help himself. He melts. "I figured if you couldn't come to me for Christmas, I'd find a way to just get to you," he whispers, and touches his forehead to Liam's to revel in the warmth and the realness of it all.
"Ah, fuck, that's so stupidly sweet," Liam complains. He rolls his forehead against Theo's and tilts his head to brush the tips of their noses together. He knows he should probably disentangle himself from his boyfriend at some point--has grown vaguely aware of a mildly amused audience from various members of the passing crowd--but right now he can't be bothered. He rather thinks he could stay in this little bubble of theirs forever, in fact.
Until, that is, Theo shifts and asks in a very particular tone of voice: "Where's your luggage, Liam?"
Liam gasps and springs down from Theo's arms to book it toward the general area where he dropped his suitcase. Theo follows at a less frantic jog. By the time he's caught up, Liam is retrieving his olive green suitcase, recognizable anywhere by its woeful mummification by duct tape, from a very pleasant if somewhat confused elderly lady who's been hanging onto it.
"--swear I'm not this scatterbrained most of the time, I mean, I guess my best friend and my boyfriend would disagree, but then again, they both would beg to disagree with me, like, 24/7, just for the heck of it--"
"Liam," Theo says from right behind him. "Shut up."
Liam turns to give Theo a rather generous piece of his mind for stepping into his business, but then his gaze falls on Theo going down on one knee on the grubby tile with an unmistakable burgundy box in his hands, and all neural function aborts in Liam's body.
He's not entirely sure he hasn't astrally projected to another plane, actually.
"Liam," Theo says again. Sliding his gaze around cursorily at the crowd that has given soft gasps of wonder. Then wandering back to Liam--always back to him, as he's done in the past, like a habit, just like breathing. "You'll be shocked to know I actually wrote this down. But then I, uh, lost it in security check when they had me take off my jacket and...anyway. Point is, I was devastated when you told me yesterday that you wouldn't be able to come home for Christmas because of everything going on here. I was seriously messed up. Ask Mason. No, wait, actually don't ask Mason. Just take my word for it." A short burst of choked laughter escapes Liam at that. "The holidays weren't going to be the same without you home, Li. You'd always been there, every single year, somehow, without fail. It wasn't going to feel like home without you, even if the others were there. And then I felt--I had a realization."
"...An epiphany?" Liam offers smally.
Theo tosses him a glare devoid of any heat for the interruption. "Fine, an epiphany. You can stop smiling about it, I know you have a bigger vocabulary than me. I had an epiphany that...home wasn't having you back in Beacon Hills. Home was being with you wherever you are, whether in LA, or New York, or the Canadian border, or even in fucking Greece."
Liam lets out a sound halfway between a curse and a sob.
"So what do you say?" Theo asks, at last. "Wanna try being each other's home for good?"
Liam stands there, legs like jelly and his smile wobbly under the hands he's clasped over his mouth. He's pretty sure his brain just conjured this entire fever dream, to be honest.
"Say yes!" a man bellows from the crowd.
Theo rolls his eyes. "A little freedom of speech for the groom-to-be, please," he admonishes hypocritically. He's totally smiling, though, and so is the man, as well as the entire clan of tourists who have stopped to gawk.
"Yes, G-d, of course I say yes," Liam chokes out. "G-d, who do you think I am? I thought you'd never ask."
"Nah, I'm pretty sure I blindsided you," Theo teases him, as Liam helps him back onto his feet and Theo takes Liam's left hand to slip the ring onto his finger.
"Twice. You gave me a heart attack twice, showing up here overnight and then popping the question, all within the span of ten minutes," Liam informs him with a mock glare. And he wastes no time in raising his fourth finger--now his ringed finger--right in Theo's face.
Theo grabs Liam's hand in midair and touches the tip of Liam's finger to his lips, softly, gently, spilling with so much aching tenderness at odds with the unquenchable fire in his eyes that Liam has no choice but to be reduced again to a puddle of goo.
"Hey," Theo says softly. "At least I made you speechless twice in the span of ten minutes."
"Excuse me, I had plenty to say," Liam protests. He tugs at his hand still in Theo's grasp. Though to be honest, he doesn't try all that hard.
"You keep telling yourself that, sweetheart," Theo snarks at him, and then he yanks Liam closer and wraps his free arm around the beta's back while intertwining their fingers with his other hand, and brings his head down ever so gently to press their lips together in an open-mouthed kiss.
Liam is absolutely, one hundred percent sure this time that this isn't an astral projection or a fever dream, because there's no way the explosion of lights behind his eyelids or the untethered swoop of his stomach as they kiss could ever not be real.
In fact, he's pretty sure that this is what it feels like to have his wish for a Christmas miracle come true.